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Facebook apologies after 6-hr outage

In an age where many lives evolve around social media, a six-hour platform outage may feel like an eternity. It’s not only one platform but three — Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram — that went down, […]

Facebook takes 10% stake in India telco Jio Platforms

Facebook is investing US$5.7 billion or a 9.99 percent stake in India’s Jio Platforms. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, Jio will use the new invesment to pursue new opportunities for businesses of all sizes, especially small merchants, micro-businesses and farmers, and create digital ecosystems that will empower, enrich and uplift the lives of all 1.3 billion Indians.

ICML: Gathering of the brightest in AI

“I’m amazed at the quality of the papers presented. The project teams’ line of thinking and breakthrough concepts are refreshing,” exclaimed a leading artificial intelligence (AI) scientist at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) in Sydney.

International Convention Centre Sydney was a massive hive of activities as 3,000 of the world’s top researchers, developers and students in AI gathered for ICML. The participants moved rapidly from one workshop to another and took great interest in the exhibition booths of top deep learning proponents such as NVIDIA, Google and Facebook.

With so many bright young talents. the event proved to be a good fishing ground for vendors as they held recruitment interviews at their booths, as well as posted openings on the board.

Caffe2, anyone?

Facebook is developing new artificial intelligent (AI) systems to help manage the vast amount of information — such as text, images and videos — generated daily so people can better understand the world and communicate more effectively, even as the volume of information increases.

It has worked with NVIDIA on Caffe2, a new AI deep learning framework that allows developers and researchers to create large-scale distributed training scenarios and build machine learning applications for edge devices.

Providing AI-powered services on mobile is a complex data processing task that must happen within the blink of an eye. Increasingly, the processing of lightning-fast AI services requires GPU-accelerated computing, such as that offered by Facebook’s Big Basin servers, as well as highly optimised deep learning software that can leverage the full capability of the accelerated hardware.

Mobile gaming fuelling gaming market growth

abi researchRising demand for mobile games is driving the video game market to reach US$80 billion in 2020, up from under US$70 billion last year, according to ABI Research.

Traditional PC and console segments, on the other hand, will see a one- to two-percent annual growth.

Triple-A titles have the potential to dramatically change a developer/publisher’s financials, but gaming’s long tail is equally important to the continued growth of the industry. This is particularly true in the mobile space where a hit title can catapult a mobile game developer into the upper echelons of the market — as was true for developers such as King Digital (Candy Crush Saga) and Supercell (Clash of Clans).

Data consumption driving teleco revenue in Malaysia

frost and sullivanData and value-added services have driven mobile growth in Malaysia to reach 42.9 million subscribers and rake in revenues of US$7.45 billion in 2014.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the Malaysian mobile market is currently growing with a mobile penetration rate of 140.7 percent.

Non-voice ARPU is expected to grow by two percent to US$5.9 billion but it will not be able to compensate for the 2.4 percent decline in voice ARPU.

GSMA and Facebook to connect the unconnected

GSMAGSMA and Facebook have announced a joint initiative to connect billions of men and women globally who currently have no access to Internet-based communications services. The initiative will focus on reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of mobile, given that mobile will be the enabling technology for the vast majority of people in developing markets.

The activities undertaken by GSMA and Facebook will entail working with governments in developing markets to address key factors that have an impact on affordability and availability. The partnership will focus on creating a sustainable environment to incentivise mobile infrastructure investment and usage, as well as eliminating or reducing existing mobile-specific taxation or refraining from imposing new such tax regimes.

Together, GSMA and Facebook will address a range of other issues that will improve affordability and help to connect the world’s population to the Internet, such as maximising the availability of harmonised spectrum to drive mobile broadband adoption; evaluating the establishment of local Internet Exchange Points; fostering the development of local Internet content; and examining the effectiveness of Universal Service Funds.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to speak at MWC

GSMAMark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook is among the line-up of new speakers in the keynote programme at the upcoming 2014 GSMA Mobile World Congress (MWC).

He will be headlining in the first of the week’s Mobile World Live keynote sessions on Monday, February 24 at 18:00-18:45. In this session, he and renowned technology journalist and writer David Kirkpatrick will explore the importance of extending the benefits of ubiquitous Internet access to the unconnected world. In addition to the live audience in the Conference Village in Fira Gran Via, the Mobile World Live keynotes will be streamed live across the venue and to hundreds of thousands of viewers globally via the Mobile World Live portal.

“Mobile World Congress 2014 is set to be our biggest, most ambitious and most diverse event yet, offering new experiences for attendees across the growing mobile ecosystem,” said Michael O’Hara, Chief Marketing Officer of GSMA. “Over four days, attendees will have the opportunity to see just how broadly mobile is impacting our everyday lives, how we work, live and play. We’re looking forward to seeing the mobile world gather in Barcelona.”